20 Ways Kakashi Atones
by Kuro Guardian
Summary: It isn't guilt or duty it's just the way things are.


**20 ways Kakashi atones**

1.) **He doesn't drink**

There is a little event involving alcohol and his "best friend's" girlfriend. She was a virgin and delicate. The miscarriage nearly killed her a month and a half later.

2.) **He refuses to smoke.**

He steals Asuma's cigarettes a habit he picked up years ago. For a while he smoked them until he had a team including Hayate into danger. They all escaped, but spending the rest of your shortened life coughing up blood is no one's idea of a treat.

3.) **He is celibate.**

Somewhere there is a little girl with silver hair. She lives with her grandmother because masked men murdered her mother. They were actually after her… He still has a grainy picture.

4.) **He has never kissed Gai back.**

And if he has ever really loved it has been that one, but he doesn't deserve to be happy, and Gai doesn't deserve his poor luck.

5.) **He used to let Itachi fuck him.**

After leading the child's favorite cousin to death it was the least he could do.

6.) **He'll never favor Naruto.**

To favor the child is to build a relationship and he does not deserve that. After all he failed the father, the mother, and he knows he will fail the child given enough time. He tires of failure.

7.) **Tattooed across his back is a prayer composed of animal-shaped sutras.**

Every year he lets the monks, tap, tap, tap the shapes of creatures into his tender skin. Weasels, foxes, apes and hounds. Spiders rest upon his spine unlike the madness they spin in his mind.

8.)** He only uses cold water to bathe.**

Because he is weak and cannot be coddled. Because blood does not wash off well in cold water. It makes him that much neater in completing his kills.

9.) **He can eat no meat and only a little fish.**

It had been cold and the jutsu was stripping him of flesh to heal him. _"We know I won't make it."_ Rubbery and – a spoiled taste that was dank almost, and it was easy once he removed the face. Once he gorged himself on steak as bloody as the chef could stand to plate. A night of vomiting followed.

10.)** His sheets are unprocessed cotton.**

As a child soldier he used to come _'home'_ and promptly wet the bed. He couldn't keep his promise not to.

11.)** He joined Anbu.**

Because 1.) Breaking his father's sword felt far too much like an ungrateful reproach. 2.) His vengeful oath not to be like his father led to creating chidori and thus Obito's death. And 3.) Obito's death was definitely an ungrateful, selfish, stupid hit at sensei and Rin. Sadly Anbu will never be enough of a punishment.

12.) **He yields himself to Tsukuyomi.**

Itachi was never to have known of that particular mission never mind volunteered. The Massacre was to have been on his head.

13.)** He has never told anyone…**

Because he should not have woken his father up.

14.) **He buried his first and only pet – by himself.**

What he doesn't seem to understand is no three-year-old should be allowed a kunai never mind be told to train with them. It's lucky he only hit the bird.

15.) **He has yearly checkups.**

Because he despises and fears medics although he'll never admit why… and Rin was a medic before she was a ninja.

16.) **When Sakura became a full-fledged medic nin he requested she become his physician.**

Every unconscious grimace and brief scowl of remembrance he forces on her of Team 7's younger days is twice as long for him – he doesn't deserve to forget his failures.

17.)** He treats Naruto to Ramen**

And states at the fourth's face the whole time, because he knows-

18.) **There is a yukata in his closet beneath a woman's makeup kit.**

He had a twin, but he grew faster and she was crushed before she could thrive. Her name was to have been Noni. And she visits the family graves every year on the 23rd.

19.) **No one will ever know he can sing or draw or that he could have been a dancer**.

Those are gifts form his mother and sister who are both dead thanks to him.

20.)** The last time he sees Sasuke he is a one-eyed mask less brunette.**

He has consigned the boy to enough nightmares for one lifetime. He doesn't wish to give him any more.


End file.
